Gop Marching Orders: Attack Clinton On Draft

WASHINGTON — We have seen the future, and it`s Bill Clinton`s service record.

Rather, it`s Clinton`s lack of a service record, and it`s going to be the central theme of the Republican campaign for the rest of the 1992 election season.

President Bush will continue to insist that he has a real economic plan;

Clinton will whine about press coverage and contend the American people do not care what he told his draft board back in the feverish days of the Vietnam War.

Clinton has tiptoed around the draft issue for 10 months, insisting it`s an old story in Arkansas, never quite connecting the dots on his various versions of Selective Service System reality.

From a distance, the story has a certain Gothic Southern ring:

Back in the late 1960s, while the smartest kid in town was gone off with his book learnin` in England, somebody told Opal down at the draft board in Little Rock to put a hold on Billy`s draft notice.

Later, Clinton`s Uncle Raymond talked to a fellow in the Naval Reserve and, still later, young Bill got an induction notice that slipped his mind and, still later, he wrote a letter thanking a Col. Holmes of the Arkansas ROTC for cutting a deal and ``saving`` him from the draft.

The whole sequence of events sounds like an extended episode of

``Mayberry RFD,`` but the national debate over the presidency is likely to be played out over this stuff.

Down in Little Rock, Clinton strategists believe it`s too late for Bush to reinvent himself, or to retool a message that will make voters any more confident about their future, or Bush`s interest in that future.That means the GOP will have to find a way to make voters ``uncomfortable`` with Clinton.

So far, the family values extravaganza and the demonization of Hillary Clinton and the preposterous accounts of Clinton`s tax policies in Arkansas haven`t gotten the job done for the GOP.

Besides, tagging an opponent with a draft-dodger label is the sort of instinctive, easy-to-follow strategy that Bush advisers like former diplomat James A. Baker III covet.

Even better for the GOP, this is a mire of Clinton`s own making. He`s treated the issue as a political problem since last winter, when the letter to Holmes surfaced.

For a politician who picked his way through the Democratic primary season (and a gaudy scandal), Clinton appears to be wishing rather than thinking on the draft question.

Part of it is the presidential finish line, which Clinton believes he has in view. The notion that the Democrat`s campaign could be kicked off the rails by murky events of a generation ago sends a chill through the Clinton camp.

``Nobody quite believes that the whole truth and nothing but ever got told in this business,`` said one Democratic consultant not in Clinton`s employ.

``The minimal argument involves contrasting a guy with a slightly flawed character against a seriously flawed president.``

When he spoke to the American Legion Aug. 25 in Chicago, Clinton prefaced his remarks by saying this was to be a ``final statement`` on the draft, much in the way he drew the curtain on questions about infidelity after he discussed his marriage on ``60 Minutes`` last January.

The tactic, which is inevitably accompanied by insistence that he has been more closely examined than other White House candidates, served Clinton pretty well in the Gennifer Flowers imbroglio.

This one won`t go away because Clinton has continued to leave open doors and hanging threads.

He has assumed public postures that aren`t credible, as when he neglected to remember that he`d received an induction notice while in England.

Back in New Hampshire, Clinton insisted he couldn`t remember (and didn`t have a copy of) the remarkable letter he sent to Col. Holmes in 1969.

Clinton`s critics have a point when they argue this isn`t any longer about Vietnam or the `60s or even the sequence of events as the Arkansas governor recalls them.

It`s about why the Democratic nominee can`t seem to collect his thoughts on this pivotal event in his life.

The line usually credited to Boston novelist George V. Higgins, and it applies in this campaign: Tell the truth. It`s the easiest thing to remember.